


Only Live Twice

by antumbral



Category: Alias
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Spies, Unsafe Sex, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:09:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antumbral/pseuds/antumbral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's sick, he's persistent, and he's the last thing she should want. To quote the song: "This dream is for you, so pay the price / Make one dream come true, you only live twice"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Live Twice

**Author's Note:**

> You only live twice or so it seems,  
> One life for yourself and one for your dreams.  
> You drift through the years and life seems tame,  
> Till one dream appears and love is its name.
> 
> And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on,  
> Don't think of the danger or the stranger is gone.  
> This dream is for you, so pay the price.  
> Make one dream come true, you only live twice.  
> \- Nancy Sinatra, 'You Only Live Twice'

"Well, well, well." She knew that accent. Dammit. "Can't say I expected to see you here."

She hadn't expected to see him either, for what it was worth. She associated that clipped British tone with exotic resorts or dangers in Africa. It belonged with tropical heat and the threat of international chaos at a moment's notice. In fact, she'd say it belonged just about anywhere _but_ in a Walgreens at 10 pm on a Saturday night, perusing an aisle lined with allergy medicines on one side and tampons on the other.

She'd had an achy, miserable kind of day. That morning she'd woken with a cough, and had guzzled hot tea in a vain attempt to avoid getting sick. She'd spent the afternoon curled up on her couch watching Julia Roberts in _Pretty Woman_ and sniffling. At eight-o-clock, she'd realized that she'd exhausted her supply of cold medicines, so she reluctantly braved the city bus to reach a drug store. It had been a wretched day, but apparently the universe really had it in for her, because there stood none other than Julian Sark, smirking at her beside the Tylenol PM because he hadn't expected to see her there.

"Well, you won't see me much longer, I'll just be going." Rachel snatched the nearest bottle of cough medicine and a box of vap-o-rub, and headed as quickly as she could for the check-out line. It wasn't fair. She was practically in her pajamas still, just a loose pair of sweatpants and a tanktop, hair unwashed and no makeup. There ought to be a law against meeting enemy agents with whom you'd had embarrassing one night stands while wearing sweatpants. He looked like he always did, as though he'd just stepped out of a particularly dapper photoshoot for GQ.

The clerk took his time about ringing up her purchases, and she'd just pulled out her credit card when an arm reached around her to the counter and deposited two bottles of cough syrup.

"Here, add these to that, and I'll pay for all of it," he said. Rachel turned to argue, but the clerk was already swiping the bottles, and suddenly she was just too tired to make the requisite fuss. If he wanted to put himself out for her sake, fine.

"Thank you," she said, because it would seem ungrateful not to say something. He didn't reply, but she could feel him watching her in the hairs on the back of her neck. The clerk bagged their purchases together, and she let Sark take the bag without comment, mostly because she was in the middle of a coughing fit at the time. He steered her gently out the automatic doors, then turned to look at her expectantly.

"Can I have my medicine now?" she asked. Maybe it was blunt, but she didn't care much about hurting his feelings. He frowned at her.

"I was going to walk you to your car."

"I came by bus. Medicines. Please?" Surely he wouldn't try to hold her vap-o-rub hostage for conversation or something. There was criminal mastermind, and then there was just plain cruel.

"By bus? But you're sick. I'd be remiss to inflict you on the unsuspecting commuters of this city again. I'll drive you home." He did hand her the bag though, so that was something. "Come on, my car's over here."

His car was exactly what she'd expected it to be; sleek, elegantly designed, and ever-so-slightly ostentatious. He held the passenger door open for her, then crossed to the driver's side and buckled himself in. They turned out of the parking lot with a bass-toned purr of engine, and he glanced expectantly at her when they reached the first stop light.

She should never have agreed to this. Here she sat, with a known enemy agent, in a weakened condition, and now she had little choice but to give him directions back to her apartment. He took her instructions without comment, and mercifully didn't try to make conversation as they drove. She fidgeted with the bag, then gave in and pulled out her cold medicine, prying open the package and downing two pills dry. He knew she was sick, it wasn't like she was giving him an advantage by admitting it.

When they pulled up to her building, he killed the engine and circled the car to get the door for her without comment.

"Thanks. I suppose I'll be seeing you… around," she finished lamely. What did you say to a man who'd recently finished an epic stint on your agency's most wanted list, then turned around and offered you a ride home?

"Actually, I thought I'd invite myself up." There was just enough suppressed smile in his tone to be insufferable.

"You must be joking."

"No, not really. You clearly need someone to take care of you, and I happen to have time on my hands. You can tell Sydney I abducted you and fed you chicken soup if it makes you feel better." He was actually herding her towards the building door, nudging her in the right direction with casual hands against her shoulders or the small of her back.

"Abducted me and fed me chicken soup." He'd reduced her to parroting. It really wasn't fair, she shouldn't have to deal with Sark while she was sick. Her mind just wasn't in the proper state to keep up.

"Indeed," he confirmed, even as one hand busily riffled through her purse in search of keys. It gave her a small, vicious flare of pleasure when he couldn't find them. After a few moments of searching, he simply stood back, one hand on his hip, and cocked an eyebrow expectantly at her.

"Were you looking for these?" she asked, and withdrew them from her pocket.

"You liked watching me make a fool of myself," he said, a little indignant, as she opened the lock.

"What can I say, I try to savor life's small pleasures." It felt good to be back in her apartment, she realized as she dropped her purse on the entry-way table. This was her territory; here, unlike in the car, she was the familiar one and he was out of his element.

"You are a cruel, sadistic woman," he said mildly from the direction of her living room. "And I should know something about cruel and sadistic." This was just banter, he wasn't aiming to hurt, so she ignored him and bypassed the living room to put the medicines in the bathroom cabinet. When she returned to look for him, she discovered him gazing forlornly into her refrigerator.

"My plan to feed you chicken soup has been set back by the sad, sad contents of your kitchen," he informed her. "What are you feelings on grilled cheese and tomato soup instead?"

It sounded good. It sounded really good, especially if she didn't have to cook. "Sounds fine."

He nodded. "All right. Why don't you go take a shower and lay down, and by the time you're done I should have food ready."

She almost obeyed unquestioningly, but then the nagging doubt returned. Sark was an opportunist; she of all people should know that. So what was the opportunity here? She didn't keep work files in her apartment, and there was nothing here that could lead him to information on Sydney or the Agency. He could find things about her family and friends, maybe try to use them as leverage, but with the kind of connections he possessed, there were faster ways to find out that sort of thing than cooking for her. She could drive herself crazy wondering what he was up to, or she could go straight to the source. She poked her head back around the door of the kitchen.

"Why are you doing this?"

He'd apparently been hunting for a spatula, because he was holding it triumphantly when he turned around to look at her in surprise. "What?"

 

 

"This!" She waved a hand at her kitchen. "Why are you doing this?"

"I wanted to," he said evenly, opening the fridge and withdrawing her hunk of cheddar.

"You wanted to."

"If it makes you feel better, think of it as me paying a debt."

It did make her feel better. He'd foregone his agency fee in Sudan after she'd saved his life, but it made a twisted sort of sense that he'd feel some personal obligation to her as well. It was a better explanation than anything she'd been able to come up with, at least. Mollified, she set off to take her shower.

She'd pulled on a different set of pajamas and just finished making a nest of pillows in bed when he knocked on the door. "Come in," she said, and he entered with two plates, each containing a sandwich cut into neat triangles and a bowl of soup. He handed her a plate and set the other down on her bedside table, then headed back towards the kitchen. In a moment, he'd returned with two glasses of water and handed her one.

"Scoot over," he said, and settled with his own plate onto the other side of her bed. It should have made her uncomfortable, but he wasn't really trying to impose on her personal space; he was keeping neatly to himself. He just needed a place to sit, and since she didn't plan on moving for the rest of the night, his sitting on the bed meant they could talk while they ate.

The food was good. Really good. "What did you do to this soup?" she asked, eyeing a spoonful suspiciously. Maybe he'd drugged it with really good-tasting drugs, and was going to try and interrogate her.

"I added a cube of bouillon and took liberties with your spice cabinet."

"Liberties?" She bit into a triangle of grilled cheese. She hadn't had sandwiches in triangles since her mother stopped packing her lunch for school. She wondered if he always cut his that way.

"Yes. Your oregano will never be the same. It was promiscuous with your basil." His smirk was slightly less mocking than it should have been.

He enjoyed this, she realized. Julian Sark genuinely liked to cook. Who'd have thought. She'd never considered him as a creature that might have hobbies, unless his hobby was something like casual blackmail. It made him seem oddly human, vulnerable in a way that even seeing him cuffed to a bomb hadn't managed.

She grinned back at him. "I don't think I even knew I owned oregano."

He nibbled delicately at his sandwich. "I was shocked too. After seeing your fridge I didn't expect you to own salt, much less actual spices."

"Hey, it's not that bad!" She felt oddly obliged to defend the honor of her kitchen. "I just travel a lot." And strangely, she didn't need to explain that, or offer a fake job as an excuse. He was one of the few people in the world who would understand.

Conversation came fairly easy after that, the combination of medicine and hot food making her feel drowsy and loose. At some point he returned the dishes to the kitchen, then came back with a quip about her lack of dish sponges to settle once more on the other side of her bed, sitting reclined against the headboard. She pushed her pillows into a different configuration and lay down on her side, so they could still talk. He didn't make a motion to get near her, and seemed content to trade verbal jabs, carefully sanitized stories about jobs gone wrong that skirted all identifying details, hints and innuendo about what their respective organizations might be looking into next.

Her eyes drifted closed as he related a capture by Amazon tribes, and she was awakened a little later by his gentle hand on her arm, shaking her. He handed her a glass of water and another round of pills, then inquired delicately about the location of a blanket for her couch. She downed the pills in one gulp and waved him back down at the nest of blankets on the other side of the bed as she drained the rest of the glass.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded and smushed her face back down into her pillows. There was some rustling from his side of the bed.

"Will you mind if I sleep in my undershirt and pants?" Pants. He was British. Well, at least he was asking, and she didn't think he meant it as a come-on. Besides, she was still too close to sleep to genuinely care about much of anything.

"G' 'head."

He got up to unbutton his shirt, and she was asleep before he even got back into the bed.

*

In the morning Rachel woke to the smell of coffee nearby. Sark was sitting propped up against the headboard, studying a morning newspaper, a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses perched daintily on his nose. He glanced in her direction.

"Yours is on the table. Take the meds first, though."

Sure enough, a mug of coffee sat on her bedside table, with a tiny cup of cough syrup beside it, and a few assorted pills. She eyed them distrustfully, sipping at her coffee. Sark rolled his eyes.

"The blue one is tylenol, the red little one is Sudafed. The cough syrup is the stuff you bought last night. If I wanted to drug you I could have done it more easily while you were sleeping."

He had a point, and her lungs decided to take that moment to try and cough themselves out of her chest. When the coughing fit passed, she downed the medicines with no more protest. The cough syrup tasted awful, but then cough syrups always did, so maybe he really hadn't doctored it. She took a sip of the coffee to mask the taste, then another. Sark rustled the paper.

"Sark, I'm still not clear --"

"Julian," he interrupted her.

"What?" Her voice sounded abnormally deep from all the irritation in her throat.

"Call me Julian. I've seen you ill, and I know what you look like when you come. It seems a little silly to stand on ceremony." He turned a page on the paper and pushed his glasses fastidiously up his nose.

"Oh." She'd forgotten what she was going to say to him. Instead she scooted closer and peered under his arm at the paper. He was reading the world news briefings: Taiwan making noise about independence before the Olympics, an earthquake in Botswana, a BBC reporter missing in Afghanistan. She pushed his arm up a little so that she could see better, and he shifted obligingly closer to her, curving himself so that the paper rested more between them.

"That was our people, you know," he said, pointing to a small note about election tampering in Russia.

"I know," she replied. "We were monitoring you, but it wasn't worth interfering."

He laughed. "Our people were watching you monitor us, but you weren't interfering, so it didn't seem sporting to take you out."

"Fucker." She swatted at him and coughed. He just laughed more at her.

"Well it's not my choice that we all do this silly little dance. I much prefer the version you and I invented in Brazil. Espionage would be so much more civilized if we could get together like normal people and have things out over whiskey."

"Or in bed?" She leaned back a little to better see his face.

"I wasn't going to say it, but yes." He grinned, bright and open. "Don't know about you, but my life would be easier if we all agreed to solve things through sex."

"You could just retire and make all our lives easier."

"And do what, spend my days lazing about in my underclothes, staying in bed indecently late in the mornings to read the paper with beautiful women? Whatever would I do with myself?"

"Ha ha." She took a deep breath and yawned. The coffee had helped her throat some, and she no longer felt like her tonsils were trying to secede from the rest of her body. Her eyes slipped closed in spite of the caffeine and she dozed off when he flipped to the financial pages, only to wake up and find her face mashed into the crease between his arm and the pillow. His t-shirt smelled like his aftershave, subtly spiced and expensive. She wondered if her pillows would smell like him later.

"Hey, you're back in the land of the living." Sark -- _Julian_ \-- had moved on to the sports section. She grunted a not-entirely-awake affirmative and sniffed to clear her sinuses.

"Here." He shifted downwards so that he was lying on his back and holding the paper above himself, then pulled her down as well so that she was lying on her side beside him. "Go back to sleep."

 

She nodded and pressed her face back to where it had been, between the curve of his bicep and the pillow. She felt him look over at her, but was asleep again before he could say anything.

*

When she awoke for the second time on Sunday, she was alone in the bed. There were more medicines on the bedside table, so she dutifully gulped them down then wandered out to the kitchen for food. He wasn't in the living room either, and the kitchen yielded only a note on the fridge:

_I'm afraid business calls again. I've left the remains of the tomato soup in the refrigerator. It should heat in the microwave for a minute, and it'll be good for your throat. Tell Sydney I was here or not as you like; at this stage your agency would have to be more competent than I've credited them if they want to track me. I intend to take the liberty of looking you up next time I'm in town, so don't claim you haven't been warned._

-J

She studied the note for a few seconds, glanced inside the refrigerator at the pot of soup, then crossed to her knick-knack drawer and withdrew a box of matches. The note burned quickly, and she washed the ashes down the drain.

*

Monaco had been a charming three-week vacation, interrupted only briefly by the necessity of removing certain documents from the custody of their Chinese oil baron owners. Rachel arrived home newly tanned and a few pounds heavier from the incredible food at the hotel.

She stepped into the foyer of her apartment, tugging her rolling suitcase behind herself, and slipped out of her heels. The answering machine blinked a bright '15' at her, so she pressed the button and let the messages run while she took the suitcase back to her room and piled dirty laundry into the basket.

She came back out in the middle of her mother's reminder that her aunt was getting married -- again -- and the wedding would be on Tuesday. She glanced at the calendar. The message was two weeks old. She hoped her mother would forgive her the absence.

Her stomach grumbled, but the kitchen was perpetually empty, so takeout was the order of the night. She ducked into the kitchen to grab a menu off the fridge, then stopped short.

On her dining table, looking fresh and innocuous and exquisite, was a single, enormous white rose. It stood tall and elegant in a crystal vase she was certain she didn't own. Behind the vase stood a half-bottle of honey colored wine – an expensive '89 Suduiraut Sauternes -- and around the base of the vase sat two pale yellow objects. Rachel stepped closer. Mangoes. They were mangoes.

Her blood ran cold. Someone had been in her house while she was away and left her wine, fruit, and a rose. Moreover, they'd clearly known her timetable, since the flower was unwilted and the fruit perfectly ripe. They'd tracked her and they'd invaded her personal space to let her know she'd been watched. Her mother's number was in the phone. Her aunt's wedding date was on the answering machine, that would be all they'd need to track the rest of her family. She was an agent, her alarm system was beyond state-of-the-art, but it hadn't registered a peep. That meant professionals.

Rachel took two deep breaths and fell back on her security training. Call the agency to let them know her identity had leaked. Call immediate family and verify their location without raising suspicions. Call the agency again and detail her immediate family's locations, so surveillance could be put in place to watch vulnerable family members. Then -- she looked around at her apartment sadly -- then get ready to leave. She wasn't safe in a location that had been so thoroughly compromised, and to stay would put not only herself but every other tenant of the building in danger.

She walked back to the bedroom, spent two hours repacking the suitcase and filling two other boxes with essentials, then walked out the front door without looking back. The agency would take care of the rest of her things, there would be a team to pack and move her books and TV. She drove to a rendezvous point, a park overlooking a river, and met the handler who'd covered her last mission to surrender herself to agency custody for a few weeks.

The agency was good at this. They'd find her a new place, but in the meantime she'd have to stay in a dorm while the informant network made sure her cover hadn't been blown completely. If she was lucky, the breach wasn't that bad and she'd still have a job. If fortune wasn't in her favor, she'd either be shunted into witness protection or, worst case scenario, turned over to the foreign government who'd discovered she was a spy and imprisoned for the rest of her life.

When they met up, her handler was noticeably stressed. He was a small man, with neat, precise hands, rather like an accountant in appearance. She'd never seen him smoke before, but as she stepped out of the car he fumbled at a lighter. It took him five tries to get a spark, he was shaking all over, and Rachel almost felt sorry for him. Her life was being turned upside down by a white flower and some fruit, yes, but his operation was also at risk. The briefing she'd been given before Monaco indicated the oil deal she'd ruined had been ten years in the making. This man's career depended on that mission; if it went south because of a security breach, his job stood in just as much danger as her own.

"The clouds seem particularly grey today," he began, and crossed to the dockside to lean on a rail overlooking the river. It was their most recent security phrase.

"They say there's a low pressure front in the east, but it'll pass," she replied.

"Meteorologists. I'll never understand how they do it." He was asking her to code in, one phrase for immediate danger, if she'd been followed or coerced or was being tracked. Another phrase would mean a more benign threat, one they still had time to combat.

"Well, the dark ages had their wizards, we have our meteorologists. Everybody needs a little magic." Benign threat. No one's going to shoot me if we speak more openly.

He turned to her and took a deep drag on the cigarette. "Were you followed here?"

"Not that I can tell. When I got home there was a flower and some fruit on my table. They knew my timetable, it was all fresh. They knew when I'd be home, and they knew how to bypass my security."

Her handler nodded. "You did the right thing. I know it's not much fun for you from here on out, but better this than waking up with a gun in your face some night because the bastards knew how to get to you."

She pressed her lips together and nodded her agreement. The wind off the river smelled like dead fish, acrid and strong. "Sorry about your mission."

"Well, we don't know that it's been blown wide yet. It's possible they only have your travel arrangements, we haven't verified that anyone knows why you went to Monaco. Wine and fruit doesn't connect too strongly to an oil deal, so top brass isn't treating it as a threat to the mission integrity yet. The go-to-ground is already out for the other operatives involved, but with any sort of luck they'll just stay in deep cover for two weeks then it'll be fine."

She nodded. In a situation like this, containment was the name of the game. "So you know where they're putting me?"

"Nah. You'll be in a dorm for a few days, but after that, who knows. If I were you I'd talk to Sydney. You two are friendly enough that she could loan you a couch for a few weeks, and she's in tight enough with higher-ups that she could probably lean on them to let you go live with her while they set you up a new apartment."

It was a good idea. Sleeping on Sydney's couch sounded infinitely better than the institutional dorm rooms -- cells, she modified privately -- to which she'd otherwise be confined. The handler dropped his cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with the toe of his shoe.

"Well, if you don't have anything else to tell me, we can get on with the formalities."

"I've given you everything I know. The apartment was definitely breached while I was away, and they definitely knew my return time with enough certainty to leave fresh flowers. Other than that, nothing was touched, and my bug sweep didn't turn anything up."

"Alright. In that case, as of now, you can consider yourself in protective custody until further notice. Report immediately to Quantico for protective confinement and further debrief. You are not under arrest, but you should consider yourself confined for security reasons until further notice. The Agency will relocate you to a new apartment before your release. Understood?"

The wind blew up behind her, lifting her hair so that it swirled into her eyes and mouth. "Understood." The handler raised his chin in a jerky little nod, and walked away. Rachel lingered by the river for another five minutes, partly to throw any pursuers off the handler, but mostly because it would be the last time she'd see it for a few weeks. Protective custody didn't mean much time outside.

A boat whistled in the distance towards the bay, and water lapped at the pilings beneath her feet. When she couldn't wait any longer, she turned away and got back in her car to head towards Quantico.

*

Well, at least the new apartment had a great view. Rachel dropped her suitcase onto the bed.

The agency might be stuffy about protective custody rules, but she couldn't fault its taste in real estate. After four weeks of mostly staring at institutional beige, the bright colors and modern lines of her new place were a pleasant surprise, and the city-wide vista from the enormous windows made her glad the Agency was paying the rent on the place. She was pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to afford it.

She got three days to settle her things before her new assignment came in: a month of slogging through the malaria swamps of Zimbabwe. When she got back she marinated in rosewater and bubble bath for hours, then barely had time to schedule a pedicure for her poor mud-ruined toes before she was off again, this time to Latvia.

Latvia wasn't bad, she'd actually liked Latvia quite a bit when she'd been there in the past, but she didn't like the Latvian winters much. Three days of scaling the sides of rustic stone castles in an attempt to eavesdrop on a potential pipeline deal kind of ruined her touristy appreciation of rough-cut stone. After that, she hopped to Italy, Nepal, Pakistan, and Chile in quick succession, finishing up with a two week stint in Rio before returning home.

Rio brought back memories, not just of dead-eyed street children and the smell of roasted plantains deep and sweet in the markets, but of Sark. _Julian._ Nighttime found her downstairs in her hotel bar, and she ordered a whiskey before she quite realized what she was doing. The bartender was toasty-skinned and flirty, and after a few shots and some teasing banter with him, she didn't feel quite as lonely as she'd worried. Days in Rio were steam-drenched and stifling, evenings were whiskey-tinged and sharp-edged, and nights were dreamless.

*

Home again, and Rachel slipped her key out of the door but didn't turn on the lights, because the city at night glistened like fireflies through the new apartment's huge windows. Her suitcase bumped over the doorframe when she tugged it, and nudged to a stop against her toe as she closed the door, leaving the room in complete darkness.

It was ridiculous of course to worry about someone finding her, but she couldn't help but feel a frisson of fear. The other times she'd come back to this apartment, it had been innocuous and safe, and there was no reason to believe that this time would be different. Still, the other times she'd done this too: stood in the dark and talked herself into enough courage to turn on the lights. This time the city lights provided a good excuse to delay a few minutes longer, and she left the suitcase by the door to cross the room and press her palms against the window. Her forehead fell forward to lean against the glass, exhausted from her return flight, disgusted with herself for being so cowardly and for her irrational fear. A click from the direction of the kitchen had her jerking back from the window, but it was only the air conditioning turning on, the click followed by the familiar whir of the fan into the silence.

She was being silly. She was tired, and it was making her too jumpy. It was time to stop procrastinating, turn on the damn lights, find the apartment undisturbed, and go to bed.

Just like that, a pair of hands closed over her shoulders. Rachel gave a short scream, and one of the hands clamped over her mouth. The intruder's arms pulled her back against their body - _male, muscular, taller than her_ \- to keep her from landing body blows, but she used her feet to push back as hard as she could from the window. The momentum should have let her flip backwards and out of his arms, but he'd anticipated it and managed to keep his balance and his grip on her, shifting an arm down around her middle. Every sense narrowed and focused, years of training kicking in to concentrate her body on the things that would help her get away: rustle of fabric like rasping file, explosions of breath near her ear every time he exhaled, booming bass of footsteps as they shifted and struggled.

"Rachel, _Rachel_ –" The voice finally registered in her mind, and she wondered how long he'd been calling her name while her body was in defense mode. As soon as she stopped struggling, the hand fell away from her mouth and the arm around her stomach loosened. She was still pressed back against his body, but there was no insistence in his hold.

Silence fell again, except for the gasps of their breath, still fast and heavy from the fight. Rachel didn't know what to say: _Why are you in my apartment? How did you know I was here? Whatever possessed you to think it was a good idea to grab me in the dark?_ Whatever she said was going to be furious, and she could feel herself beginning to tremble with the aftereffects of adrenaline.

The rise and fall of his chest had slowed behind her, and he nudged her forward until they stood once more in front of the window, his arms wrapped loosely around her from behind. "I'm sorry I frightened you." He wasn't speaking loudly, but Rachel startled nonetheless and his hand stroked soothingly down her side. "I thought you'd heard me move when you came in. I thought you knew I was here."

She shook her head wordlessly, then cleared her throat. "How did you find me?" Her voice sounded dry and weaker than she wanted.

He chuckled lightly against her ear. "I have my ways."

"You left the rose in my old apartment." She'd suspected it before, and if she'd known at the time she wouldn't have had to move, but she wasn't in a business where you stayed alive by taking safety risks and making assumptions. Better to move to safety than assume she wasn't being threatened.

"Yes. You got back before I expected. I intended to meet you there, so you'd know who it was, but I had to step out and you got in before I thought you would. My apologies for troubling you."

His thumb pressed gentle circles against her stomach, and Rachel found it difficult to feel as angry at him as she ought. He'd broken into her apartment twice, and had forced her into protective custody for a month. It was _beyond_ audacious, it was arrogant and ridiculous and dangerous. It was _Sark_. And maybe that was why even though she was steamed, and certainly annoyed, she wasn't feeling the level of all-consuming rage that his actions deserved.

Still, "I should call Agency right now and tell them where you are. I could probably keep you here long enough for them to get a team out."

He laughed and molded himself more firmly against her. "You won't."

It almost made her head for the telephone out of sheer obstinacy. He lipped against her ear though, nuzzling, and she let herself imagine the alternatives. It had been a while since she'd wanted someone this badly, and strangely, she sort of trusted him. He seemed to follow his own twisted code of chivalry.

He'd cooked her tomato soup when she was sick.

A hand stroked the hair back from her face and she leaned into it, baring her neck so he could feather kisses down to her shoulder.

"This isn't me forgiving you," she muttered as his hand dropped away from her face to nudge beneath her shirt and touch skin.

"I'll owe you one." His accent fell thicker when muffled against her skin.

Give the man this: he knew what he was doing when it came to her body. Her shirt and bra melted away in a haze of lazy, drugging kisses and gentle hands. She managed to get his shirt off as well, pressing her fingers into scars she remembered and discovering a few new ones. He turned her back around to face the window and cupped his hands beneath her breasts, his chest furnace-hot against her back.

"Good?" he breathed into her ear.

"Mmm." She closed her eyes and let the moan rumble deep in her throat. Wise fingers pinched her nipples until they stood taut and she shivered from the sensation. He sighed contentedly, a soft heave of warm muscle against her back.

"Come on." There wasn't any question to it, no _Do you want to do this?_ in his voice. He knew where this was headed as surely as she did, and he approached sex with the same curious blend of pragmatism and confidence that he brought to everything else. It probably never crossed his mind that she might not want to sleep with him, and strangely, she was okay with that. It wasn't like anyone in their business had time for serious love affairs, and her own romantic history was a series of unmemorable one-night stands in the most memorable places in the world. Compared to a night on her own, Sark was a much better option: he was a playful and creative bedfellow, even generous in his own way. Rachel discarded any regrets alongside her crumpled shirt and bra, and followed as he led the way into her bedroom.

It was darker in here than even in the living room, since the living room windows provided scant illumination, but the bedroom was windowless. She reached for the light switch, but his hand closed around her wrist.

"Leave it." He gave her a little nudge in the direction of the bed, then closed the door behind himself.

Utter darkness presented a new challenge: she hadn't stayed in the apartment long enough to know it by instinct, so she found the bed by groping touches and left her pants and underwear in a little pile by what she assumed was the nightstand. The dark intensified other sensations: made her hyper aware of the dip in the bed when he climbed on it. She stilled and reached out with her ears until she was sure that he hovered over her. The whisper of his breath across her lips confirmed it.

"We did this fast before." She could feel every sound like a puff of air across her face, no other part of him touching her. "Can I take my time here?"

"Yes," she exhaled, and would have worried about whether he'd hear it, except there was nothing else for him to see or hear but her, and if Sark was good at anything it was concentrating on an objective.

"Good." His hands found her shoulders and ran down to her wrists, pushing her arms up above her head and nuzzling at the soft skin beneath her biceps.

She'd never done this before: let someone completely take her apart without worrying about whether she looked weird, or whether they'd think worse of her in the morning. When he settled his full weight on her, tilting his hips to rub against the place where she was already slick and heated for him, she stifled a groan.

"No, don't," he muttered against the curve of her breast. "I want to hear you."

"Sark," she whispered, and could feel his smile against her skin.

"What am I going to tell you?"

"Julian."

"Better." Quick frisson of teeth against her nipple, brief pain that shocked up her spine and faded into pleasure.

"God, that feels good."

"Yeah?" A sinuous twist of his spine brought him up to her mouth for kisses, his tongue finding the same rhythm as his hips, stroking against her lips as his cock rubbed sweet pressure into her clit.

"Yeah, more." She liked that she could taste his smile, it let her guess at the familiar, roguish quirk of lips and sparkling eyes.

"Okay." A hard thrust of his hips brought a snarl to her throat, and he licked at the column of her neck.

More pressure was good for him too, she could feel it in the way his shoulder coiled tight above her, in the sweet cut of muscle just above his hips. He buried the throaty, shuddered groan he made in the shadow of her neck and collarbone.

Just the right angle of his hips had the head of his cock catching across the opening of her cunt, and they both froze. Shallow pressure there, not penetrating – yet – but asking, and he raised his head until his mouth was open over hers. It wasn't a kiss, just like it wasn't yet sex, but he breathed her in and rubbed the head of his cock across her cunt and trembled with the effort of not just sinking down.

"Rachel," he whispered, and when her hands came up to touch his shoulders he startled and his hips jerked. She could feel him slide inside her, just a little, just the head of him.

"Are you sure that you want it like this?" he asked, withdrawing until her body felt like it could scramble for him then pressing back, just the slightest pressure, only an inch of him inside, maybe less. "You sure you want me bare?"

There were condoms in her bedside drawer, but the subtle dance of his body against hers, so close to what she needed from him but just flirting with her, making all sorts of promises but not keeping any, made her hesitate. The ageny had them all on IUDs and birth control injections, so pregnancy wasn't a concern. A good girl would insist on the rubber, and she always had in the past, with other lovers. But he brushed a hand down her body, squeezing her breast then further down to dust lightly over her clit, and she decided she didn't give a damn anymore. The tease of that barely-there penetration and withdrawal, the flutter of his fingertips against her clit, his breath against her lips and the knowledge of his incredible body above her, even though she couldn't see it, it was all too much temptation.

Rachel fisted her hands in the sheet and shoved upward, forcing him halfway inside her without bothering to warn him. He jerked like she'd punched him and his forearms slammed down on either side of her head.

"Don't do that," he breathed against her, voice low and lungs shattered into fits and starts, little gasps as he forced himself to withdraw until he was still just barely flirting with pressure. "Christ, Rachel, don't do that or I'm not going to last long enough to make this good for you."

She laughed into his mouth and countered by easing back up into him, going slow this time and pulling his hips down until he was full and throbbing inside her.

"You?" She licked over his lips and dug her fingertips down into the muscle of his ass. "Julian Sark, hairtrigger? I must say," she gave a little shimmy under him and pushed her hips up until she could feel him bump her cervix, seated as deep as he could go inside her, "I expected better."

"Yeah, well," he kissed back, a little more aggressive, following her lead because if there was one thing he was good at, it was being competitive, "give me a minute and you'll get something better."

He was moving against her now, slow as tidal waves but with enough power behind his hips that it felt good. "I'll just lay here and wait," she said, and he laughed and nipped at her lips.

"Minx," he whispered, but kept the rhythm slow: long, deep, steady thrusts that at first weren't enough, and she urged him faster. But he pinned her hands beside her head and brushed a kiss across the shell of her ear. "Stay with me," and gradually she could feel what he meant. The intensity built, stoked a slow fire at the base of her skull. Her breathing slowed down to fit his rhythm, whole body sinking into the zen of that slow, bone deep motion. "You feel it?" he asked, mouth back over hers so that they were breathing together, inhaling and exhaling each other.

"Yeah," she said into his mouth. She'd never had sex like this before. She'd had sex, hell she'd had sex with him that was hotter, more desperate. But she'd never had someone wear her down and take her apart like this, until she felt like she was floating in sensations so good any one of them could be an orgasm, but at the same time trembling on the edge of something bigger, just out of reach. She could do this for hours, feel just this good for all time, no urgency but the slow strokes of his body into hers.

The amazing thing was that the pleasure kept building. It might have been hours that they were together, kissing, touching softly, listening to the broken little noises he made when she rolled his balls against her palm, or she made when he sucked at her breasts. Eventually he slowed down even more, rested his forehead against hers and pushed his fingers into her hair. She knew she was trembling around him, could help it, couldn't control it because every pleasure center she had was stoked into overload and had been for a while, lightning through her spine and the aching space beneath her lungs wide and fiery with need, but somehow she still hadn't come yet.

"I can't come like this," she whispered, overwhelmed, her eyes flying open and staring blindly into the dark. "It's too much."

"Yeah you can," he contradicted gently. "Just trust me, okay?

She nodded a little frantically. He smiled against her breast and reached down to touch her everywhere but where she needed it most, skirting her clit. She wiggled against him and he bit down on her collarbone to still her, then he carefully slid a finger inside her alongside his cock. She almost came from the feel of it alone, the unexpected stretch and the way his hips stuttered as she tightened around him. He crooked it forward to stroke over the best spot inside her as his cock hit her deep, and it still wasn't enough. Any one of these strokes should be enough, but she'd been so high so long that her body refused to tip over into that white space of orgasm, and instead it still built inside her, wrapped her nerves up into knots so that she was straining against him, arched wire-tight up into him and unable to stop the keening, desperate noises coming out of her mouth.

"So gorgeous," he whispered. "Just stay with me, okay, a little longer." She didn't have a choice. He'd wound her so tight she didn't know how she could take any more.

He withdrew the finger he'd had inside her and trailed it up her body, leaving a trail of moisture around her navel, fading between her breasts. Both his thumbs stroked hard up her throat, then did it again, so that she had to struggle to get air past the pressure there. He didn't scare her, the oxygen debt just made her head a little more fuzzy than it already was, made the sensation of each hard, deliberate thrust inside her seem that much more magnified. The air in the room felt like fire. "Trust me," he murmured again, and this time when he increased the pressure she realized in a knife-sharp moment that she couldn't breathe. His forehead rested against hers and he upped the tempo of his hips: hard, almost vicious thrusts that sparked flares of light behind her eyes. "Trust me, Rachel."

Four more hard, _hard_ thrusts and her head went completely white, pressed into a space so far beyond pleasure that she wasn't sure if it hurt or not. That's when he let off the pressure at her throat and the first tremendous breath threw her over the edge of the strangest orgasm she'd ever had. Every motion of his body intensified it: his breath against her skin, his hands in her hair, the soft brush of his ankle against her own. Every nerve in her body fired to supernova, and even the bedclothes against her back felt too sensitive. And it didn't stop. She didn't come back down like usual, he'd wound her too tight, for the longest time she hadn't been able to come and now it wouldn't stop. He might have said something but the sound got lost in the static of her head, his body pushing hers higher and higher until she drifted completely into the white noise, combusted in a flare of sunlight despite the dark of the room, surrendered completely and _fell_.

*

When she blinked back awake, the room was still completely dark, and he was laying beside her, stroking her hair and waiting.

"Hey," he whispered, and she didn't need to see to tell that he was smiling.

"Hey," she whispered back.

"You okay?"

"How long was I out?"

"A minute or so. Not long." His hand ventured idly across her stomach, rubbing slow circles into her skin. Rachel rolled onto her side and tugged him up for a kiss. "We were crazy not to do this earlier," he said, stroking a thumb across her cheekbone.

"We were crazy to do this at all," she contradicted, mouthing at his throat. He tilted his head back to give her better access.

"You were gorgeous lit up under me like that." A hand stroked down her ribs and settled comfortably in the small of her back, pulling to settle her against his side.

She huffed out a soft breath, and nuzzled the curve of muscle where his bicep melted into his chest. For a while they both were silent.

"I should tell you," he said. "I'll have to go in the morning. I'll try not to wake you up." She nodded. Another pause. "I'll be back," he said, and she sensed a question beneath the certainty in the words.

"Like you were back this time?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's not like I can keep you out, apparently. My poor alarm system might never recover."

"It's fine, I reset it when I let myself in. But Rachel, if you don't want me here –."

"It's not like I can keep you out," she repeated contentedly, and he kissed her on the forehead.

"Okay."

It wasn't a yes, because it could never be yes between them. They couldn't do this, weren't doing this, and if he couldn't keep away and she couldn't keep him out, it was better that way. _Look too close and it disappears_ , she thought, and snickered against his chest because the story of her life was that she didn't look closely enough to see things coming. "Shhh," he whispered into her hair, and she obeyed. Her eyes closed, and Rachel fell asleep to the rise and fall of his chest beneath her, his scent in her nostrils and his breath in her hair.

*

In the morning he was gone. She found the note taped to the central window of her dining room.

_They'll send you to Spain in two days, thought you might appreciate the heads-up. Be careful. I've never told anyone that before, so you'd bloody well better listen. I'll look you up when we're both in Austria at the end of the month._

-J

Rachel smiled in spite of herself, shook her head, and burned the note. She stared after the ashes for a moment when they disappeared down the drain, then turned and went to get her coat. If she was leaving for Spain soon, she wanted a haircut first. And maybe she'd call Sydney about her alarm system, add some hidden safeguards for next time. She didn't really mind Sark's little visits, but there was no sense in leaving herself wide open to whoever wanted to waltz in. Besides, if she let him in with no challenge he'd get bored, and she wouldn't want to come off as easy.  



End file.
